Sam Harris: Free Markets Must End
The inevitable ubiquity of AI and mass automation, said Harris, will drive rates of unemployment far higher than contemporary levels. Dealing with such a future, he added, requires a political paradigm shift away from free market principles (emphasis added):
“There precipice we’re getting to is, virtually everyone is gonna be [made redundant by artificial intelligence and automation]. And that’s a good thing. Why can’t they figure out that they just wanna learn new languages and spend more time with their kids and play frisbee and have fun. We need a new ethic and politics that decouples a person’s claim on existence from doing profitable work that someone will pay you for, because a lot of that work is going away.
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The spread of AI and mass automation in a free market environment, continued Harris, would almost certainly exacerbate “wealth inequality.” He pushed a Marxist narrative of free markets inevitably yielding extreme polarization of wealth between groups, with class warfare resulting in revolution:
“At a certain point, the wealth inequality will be obviously unsustainable. You can’t have multiple trillionaires walking around living in compounds with razor wire, and just moving everywhere by private jet, and then massive levels of unemployment in a society like ours. At a certain point, when the richest people realize, 'Enough is enough. We have to spread this wealth because otherwise people are just gonna show up at our compounds with their AR-15s or their pitchforks.' The society will not sustain it. There has to be some level of wealth inequality that is unsustainable; that people will not tolerate ... Redistribution is the end game."
The inevitable ubiquity of AI and mass automation, said Harris, will drive rates of unemployment far higher than contemporary levels. Dealing with such a future, he added, requires a political paradigm shift away from free market principles (emphasis added):
“There precipice we’re getting to is, virtually everyone is gonna be [made redundant by artificial intelligence and automation]. And that’s a good thing. Why can’t they figure out that they just wanna learn new languages and spend more time with their kids and play frisbee and have fun. We need a new ethic and politics that decouples a person’s claim on existence from doing profitable work that someone will pay you for, because a lot of that work is going away.
[clip]
The spread of AI and mass automation in a free market environment, continued Harris, would almost certainly exacerbate “wealth inequality.” He pushed a Marxist narrative of free markets inevitably yielding extreme polarization of wealth between groups, with class warfare resulting in revolution:
“At a certain point, the wealth inequality will be obviously unsustainable. You can’t have multiple trillionaires walking around living in compounds with razor wire, and just moving everywhere by private jet, and then massive levels of unemployment in a society like ours. At a certain point, when the richest people realize, 'Enough is enough. We have to spread this wealth because otherwise people are just gonna show up at our compounds with their AR-15s or their pitchforks.' The society will not sustain it. There has to be some level of wealth inequality that is unsustainable; that people will not tolerate ... Redistribution is the end game."
